


Immortalized

by MercuryHomophony



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, ttazce2k17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 06:23:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13382025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryHomophony/pseuds/MercuryHomophony
Summary: Johan wanted to be known. He was the greatest violinist in the world.--My #ttazce2k17 gift for AgentChimendez, about her favorite music boy, Johan!





	Immortalized

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Candlenights, PC! I hope you like your gift! :D And a happy Collabor8teen!

Johan was, without exaggeration, the _greatest_ violinist to have ever lived. Unquestionably and undeniably. He met with consensus everywhere he went, met with the tears of people moved by his music, met by the stories those people brought back to him, about how their lives had changed after his music had breathed inspiration into their souls. It was his calling, his passion, his profession, and his art, all in one.

It paid very little.

It was counterintuitive, he thought. You’d think being the best at something – _anything_ – would be a claim to fame. But, in this day and age, there was a certain level of marketing that was necessary to get a good gig, and he was far more interested in creating his music than networking or producing music boxes for the masses.

Unfortunately, even skinny, music-driven half-elves had to eat, and so when his purse ran dry, he’d take out his violin, set a cloth over the inside of the casing (couldn’t let the coppers he earned scuff the inside, it might damage the violin) and tune up.

His touch was always light – tuning was an art in and of itself when you were busking, the discord slowly melting into proper notes and harmony. It attracted attention, and if you did it right, it attracted interest.

He was pleased to hear a few whispers from the few passersby accumulating around him: his name, on some breaths, his description in others, and accounts of his skill. There hadn’t been much of an interest in the arts when he’d been younger, but within the last year, there’d been a sudden uptick in interest. He wasn’t sure exactly what the cause was, but he wasn’t complaining.

He put his bow to the string.

There wasn’t a lot he wanted in life, he mused, coaxing the first few notes from his instrument. A hush fell over the growing crowd, the world outside the little town’s street corner fading to the back of their minds, and then, to nothing. He wanted to create music. He wanted to tap into that most base element of the world, that song that flowed through everything, and channel it through himself, into the ears of those around him. He wanted to inspire, to drive, to incite passion around him.

More than that, even, he wanted to hear the song that would become legend in a hundred years’ time.

…

No, he thought, the notes of his song taking a more direct turn, eliciting an instinctive gasp from his captive audience as the melody gripped their hearts. No, he didn’t want to just hear it, he-

He wanted to be known. He wanted to be remembered.

_He wanted to be part of that song._

He played forever, and for far too brief a time, but when the song was ready to be over, he led it back to the undercurrent of the world-song with three decisive, harmonic strokes, and it lingered in the air even after the music vanished.

There wasn’t a single coin in his case, but he’d expected that. His audience was still too wrapped up in the stillness that followed his composition. Slowly, though, they began to break from it, and the attention that they’d paid him couldn’t be played off.

Slowly, silently, coins dropped into his case, while he idly pretended not to notice, going back to fiddling unnecessarily with the tuning pegs. He’d learned early on that people didn’t like to be acknowledged giving to pan-handlers, and he gave them the courtesy of anonymity.

Normally, the people would disperse, and he’d be left alone with his case full of money, enough to carry him for a few days before he’d need something else.

Normally, he’d wait a few hours, pick another corner, and play again.

He didn’t know it then, but that busk would be the last normal thing in his life. And it all started with the woman who stayed behind.

She was older, human, with a dark, wisdom-creased face that he associated more with the longer-lived dwarves. Her eyes shone with unshed tears, likely from his performance, but her stern countenance refused to let them fall. She clutched a white oak stave in her hands, leaning on it as though it were a lifeline, but she moved with easy, if stiff, grace when she approached him, blue robes giving her an air of gliding.

He expected her to drop a coin or two in his case.

“Excuse me, are you Johan?” Her voice was more kindly than the steel in her form, in her eyes, let on, but that was not what gave him pause. What gave him pause was the single note he heard, under her words.

The beginnings of a song.

He broke his own rule, lowering his violin and turning to her. Apparently, that was all the confirmation she needed, because she continued. “I heard you were the greatest violinist in the world. Seems I haven’t heard wrong.”

“Were you looking for me?” he asks, half in hope, half in wariness. He hasn’t done anything illegal, per say, but there are some towns that greatly discourage busking. Still, she doesn’t look like law, and those notes stir compellingly under her voice. She’s not a bard, he can tell just by looking at her, but the world-song has a solitary melody hidden within her.

“I have a job for you,” she says, in lieu of an answer. “I can’t tell you much about it now, but –“ He can see her falter, and by the twist of her brow, he can tell it’s not something she’s comfortable with – “but I can tell you it is of grave importance, and something only someone of your skill would be able to do. Will you hear out my offer?”

He thinks about it, weighs his options as he turns back to his violin, turning the tuning pegs in earnest now as he loosens them for traveling.

He thinks about the weight in her eyes.

He thinks about the evasiveness of her offer.

Mostly, though, he thinks about what he wants, and he thinks about the song he can hear stirring.

He looks up and shrugs.

“Yeah, sure.”

 

\--

 

He loves Fischer, from the moment he drinks the ichor and can actually see it floating in its tank without his eyes brushing over it. The first thing it does is sing to him, and Director Lucretia, the woman who had brought him here. It’s a short melody, only a few notes in quick succession, but he listens, enraptured. Next to him, Director Lucretia is telling him to take it easy, that remembering can hurt if you take it too quickly –

_( - there are memories coming back, of wars that tore across the countryside, of relics with unimaginable, uncontrollable power, but he’d already been alone before they’d started, and he’d always had his music, nothing had changed - )_

– but he isn’t listening to her. He’s busy categorizing the harmony of Fischer’s voice, the notes it sings, analyzing its melody, and he’s pulling out his violin before Lucretia can finish speaking, tucking it under his chin –

_(A single drop of ichor escapes his lips and stains the wood iridescent. It never comes out.)_

And he plays for Fischer for the first time.

Later, Lucretia explains what Fischer is, how (as she knows it) their species works. She explains to him how Fischer needs new compositions to live and grow. She explains how Fischer is the one thing keeping the world below from falling apart while they find the Grand Relics. She explains his new job, in full. He’s drunk the ichor, so in a way there’s no going back, but she tries to give him an out if he wants it. He doesn’t want it.

It doesn’t take him long to think it over. He agrees to feed his work to Fischer. He knows that everyone will forget, for now, but once the Grand Relics have been destroyed, once there’s no more risk of war, then Fischer won’t have to hold onto his works anymore.

He thinks about the story Lucretia told him, about the Legato Conservatory, a place he’s never heard of, and thinks about how artists only brought their best. He thinks, as he composes snacks for Fischer, about the world-song he hears bubbling throughout the halls of the Bureau headquarters. He thinks, while Fisher sings to him and he plays back, about being remembered and being forgotten.

He thinks, maybe it’s time to start crafting his own magnum opus. And he starts to compose The March of the Forgotten.

Much later, when Fischer produces an egg Johan never gets to see, when his memory gets fine-tuned and redacted with everyone else’s, when he forgets the stories the Director told him about the Legato Conservatory, forgets Fischer’s name, forgets that one day he’ll be remembered again, his mood takes a turn for the worse. His one goal, once put off to follow a greater good, to follow a story he _knows_ will be worth telling, now seems suddenly unreachable.

No one seems to understand the sudden change in his disposition, but he’s never been the most outgoing person to begin with, so they don’t question it, either.

He writes his pieces, and feeds them to oblivion, one by one. Sometimes, he’ll go planet side, and play on a street corner like he did before, pretending they’ll remember it later.

(They don’t, he’ll have to erase the account of him being down here as well as the compositions themselves, but he can pretend).

His compositions take on a more melancholic tone, and even though he still finds moments of happiness in his life and his work, the evanescence of his being hangs over him like a dreadful weight.

He never stops following the world-song, though. He never stops crafting his finest piece.

He never stops loving the Voidfish.

 

\--

 

His death is swift, and inglorious. It is silent.

It’s the beat before the song begins, and that is so important, but as he rises above his body, he’s so scared. This is it. This is his nightmare scenario, and no song goes on after the pieces stop moving, and he is no longer moving.

His soul should be drifting to the Astral Plane, but it’s not. He doesn’t know it, but at the moment, there’s no permeable membrane between the Prime Material Plane and the plane that houses the dead – the Hunger has seen to that. All he knows is that he’s died, and he and his work will be forgotten.

Then, he sees the Hunger around him, the instrument of his demise.

And then, he sees the mannequin fall, and Magnus’s soul, still vital, rises out of it, being drawn away to some other purpose.

And Johan, dead and freed from the obfuscation of Fisher and Junior, remembers.

He remembers the stories about the Legato Conservatory, remembers Director Lucretia’s fond but sad recollection of the friend who befriended the voidfishes, remembers what they’re _capable of._

He looks across the room, at Fischer, who is fighting ferociously against the agents of the Hunger, and levels his gaze to Magnus.

Here is someone else who knows what the Voidfish is capable of.

“Magnus,” he says. He doesn’t even have seconds, this is the beat before the song, and he can hear the orchestra stirring. “Don’t let them erase me, Magnus. Don’t let them make the world forget.”

Magnus doesn’t get a chance to respond, but Johan has nowhere to go. He watches as Fischer destroys the armies of the Hunger, watches as more pour in, watches helplessly as Fischer loses ground, and then, watches as, with a triumphant brassy fanfare, fire catches through the ranks of the Hunger, purging the invasion from the face of the false moon.

Fischer falls, and Johan goes to its side. He knows what it needs, but he can’t – not like this. Not as he is now.

He doesn’t have to wait long, though – soon enough, Magnus comes rushing in again, and clinging to his shoulder is the baby Voidfish.

The reunion is touching, for all three of them, but Johan feels a stir of sorrow when Fisher nudges his body to indicate to Magnus what it needs.

Johan knows what Junior and Magnus are going to find on his desk, and he knows what’s about to happen.

He’s taken off guard when Magnus stops, beside his body, kneeling for just a moment.

“I will remember this,” Magnus says, with a conviction that reverberates as steadily as a base drum, as a heartbeat. “And I will make sure everyone else does. What you have done, and what you have given, will not be forgotten.”

Johan wishes he could tell Magnus that he knows, he knows about the Voidfish, he knows what they can do, and that Magnus doesn’t need to carry Johan’s magnum opus as if he was carrying out a death sentence.

Magnus feeds the March of the Forgotten to Fisher, and there’s the breath before the sound, the hand of the conductor lifted, the instruments readied, the audience rapt with anticipation.

And then, there’s a wave of blue light, and then of green, and Johan hears his song broadcasted to the world, carrying its message, heralding the strange tale of the seven birds and their battle across all of reality. He feels the power behind it because – because it’s _his,_ he _crafted_ it, but now – now, it belongs to so many others as well.

There is power in a bard’s song, one that has the strength to linger far after he’s gone, and he gets to hear his place in the worldsong before the barrier between the planes is broken, and he’s whisked into the Astral Plane.

 

\--

 

When things settle down, the Astral Plane is… peaceful. There’s a song here, too, but it’s quieter than the one on the Prime Material Plane, mostly. There’s the occasional stir from the Eternal Stockade, although that seems less frequent after the souls of Legion’s sentence had been lessened, thanks to their aid in the fight against the Hunger. There’s the occasional riff whenever the reapers come and go – louder and brasher for Taako’s sister and the one wearing blue jeans, quieter and more in tune for Kravitz, who’s been here longer.

People live, and people die, and they come to join the other souls in the Astral Sea. Those who are not ready yet wait on the shores of small islands, waiting, watching, processing their lives and finding peace for themselves. Particularly rambunctious or wayward souls find their way to the Eternal Stockade by hook or crook (or scythe) to receive guidance for their rehabilitation. Johan is not one of those, but he’s also not quite ready to join the sea. Not yet.

He can feel an encore coming, and he wants to see this piece through.

So, he waits, and as he waits, he plays. They say you can’t take it with you, but you’d be hard pressed to find a bard who can’t whisk up an instrument when they need it. It’s been awhile since he’s just been able to play idly like this – Fisher was hungry and sort of a picky eater, so most of his time went to composing better and better pieces for it. If he really thinks about it, he hasn’t simply played this long for sheer enjoyment since before he joined the Bureau.

He doesn’t regret it, but it gives him a newfound appreciation for it, and so he indulges his own whims of fancy as he sits and bows, trying new melodies and revisiting old ones, playing the same notes over and over in succession when he feels like it, and switching to something else when he grows tired of them. Not all of it is fantastic, but it’s all great; he is, after all, the greatest violinist who has ever lived.

Kravitz has stopped by several times since the Day of Story and Song, at first under the (poor) pretense of questioning him, and then with the honesty of simply wanting to listen. They’ve talked, a few times, and Johan was pleased to have found a kindred soul. Sure, he was a violinist and Kravitz was – had wanted to be – a conductor, but they were both bards, both familiar with that song that drove them, and they appreciated each other’s company.

So, when the small sandbank he’s resting on is suddenly cloaked in shadow, he looks up, expecting to see Kravitz has returned for another visit.

The mass of darkness and feathers, topped with a bleached white raven skull, is not Kravitz.

It’s his years of practice that allow him to keep his composure well enough to gently lead the melody he’s playing to its conclusion, and the entity before him waits as he does so, tilting its head curiously. Johan can see white fire burning in its eye sockets, and has a sudden suspicion regarding the identity of his new guest.

_You play very well, Johan the bard,_ the Raven Queen, Goddess of Death, and his friend Kravitz’s boss, says to him. _I have never heard that composition before – is it one of your own making?_

“Well, yeah, I mean…” He shrugs, not exactly sure how he ought to talk to an actual Goddess, but if they’re talking music… “I mean, it’s not really a composition? More like, just something I’m playing around with.”

She hums thoughtfully, and the sound rumbles through the little sandbank, sending ripples out over the Astral Sea. _I see._

She’s still eying him over, and he’s not sure exactly what she expects to see, or if she’s hoping he’ll do something. When she seems disinclined to speak again, he slowly plucks out a few notes, finding a melody to play with, before switching back to bowing, playing something soft and soothing, both to calm his own nerves and to avoid the ire of the Goddess in front of him.

She, much like her Reaper, listens with rapt attention. The glow in her eyes dims somewhat, but never once do they leave him as he plays.

When that song comes to an end, she shifts again, taking a step closer on shadowed talons. _And that one?_

It takes him a moment to realize what she’s asking, but when he does, he’s not sure why she’s asking. “Uh… just another melody, I guess.”

_Just another melody,_ she echoes, and her voice isn’t loud, but it rings out nonetheless over the surface of the Astral Sea. Johan hears in it the harmony of the plane, sweet and melancholic, and at rest.

“So, umm… I don’t want to be, like, disrespectful or anything,” he says, carefully, because – again – Goddess, “but like… is there something I can do for you, or do you just… talk randomly to people?” Maybe she does. Kravitz hadn’t mentioned anything like that, but Johan hadn’t asked, either. For all he knows, this is standard afterlife fare.

She laughs, distinctly unmusical and crow-like. _I don’t, usually. There are so many of you – visiting each one of you, addressing you each by name – that would take millennia of time that even I cannot spare._

…he _probably_ shouldn’t look too much into it, but – “You remembered _my_ name.”

The fires in her eyes flare and crackle, and the skull’s beak curves as if to smile. _Johan the bard, everyone in existence knew your name and your work that day. In one hundred years, everyone who lives will have heard of you. In one thousand years, your name will be immortalized for what you have created, across this plane, and others.”_ She settles, for lack of a better word, darkness and pinions ruffling in waves as she seats herself nearby, a conspirator. _“I would ask a task of you. Will you hear my offer?”_

He thinks back to when he last heard those words, and how it turned out. He looks up at the Goddess of Death, and shrugs. “Yeah, sure.”

 

\--

 

In the Astral Plane sits a building – it is the only one like it, a stark charcoal mark against a pastel horizon.

It is the Eternal Stockade, and it houses the souls of those who would, whether they know it or not, seek to break the balance that the Raven Queen and her Reapers so carefully maintain. Some of the souls there are in higher security – the souls of necromancers, dark wizards, and the greatest offenders; Liches. These souls need careful maintenance, care, and a watchful eye. Many of them have been here for longer than they’d been alive, but the Raven Queen does not give up on lost souls – she knows they’ll find their way to peace eventually, and she and her Reapers are there to help rehabilitate them.

The majority of the souls, however, are those of the restless or the discontent. Those killed unjustly, those thirsty for power, those who have yet to shake the mental shackles of their material gains, they too collect within the Eternal Stockade. After the Day of Story and Song, there have been more than ever, and even with three Reapers, there’s only so much time they can spend trying to help the souls here, when there are so many out there in need of rescue or collecting, and the longer these souls stay in the Eternal Stockade, the more restless they become.

The Raven Queen, however, has thought of a solution.

There is power in a bard’s music, and as Johan plays in the archway of the building, as it seeps through the stones of the Eternal Stockade, as it reaches every new soul who enters the Astral Plane, they hear what they need to hear, in that moment. And every soul on the Plane knows about the Day of Story and Song, knows about the seven intrepid voyagers who saved, well, pretty much everything. More so, they know the bard who inspired the world to save themselves, and each other, and Johan has a deep sense of satisfaction as his newest composition sings out through the Astral Plane.

And as each soul enters the Astral Plane, as every soul in the Eternal Stockade resists their entrapment, they hear a song that they recognize.

It’s not the same one that every world heard on that fateful day, but the composition couldn’t be mistaken. And they hear it, and it is just what these restless souls need to sooth them, just what these lost souls need to guide them. The three Reapers, back from a successful mission, look up from their paperwork, and somewhere in the shadows of the plane, the Raven Queen smiles.

They hear it, too.

_We fought. And we won._

_We’ve lived, and we’ve loved._

_We are gone,  
  
But we are _ never _forgotten._


End file.
